Install/Partitioning

This is a template that is used as part of the Installation instructions which covers: the process of partitioning and filesystem creation. Templates are being used to allow multiple variant install guides that use most of the same re-usable parts.

Prepare Hard Disk

Introduction

In earlier times, there was only one way to boot a PC-compatible computer. All of our desktops and servers had a standard BIOS, all our hard drives used Master Boot Records, and were partitioned using the MBR partition scheme. And we liked it that way!

Then, along came EFI and UEFI, which are new-style firmware designed to boot systems, along with GPT partition tables to support disks larger than 2.2TB. All of the sudden, we had a variety of options to boot Linux systems, turning what once was a one-method-fits-all approach into something a lot more complex.

Let's take a moment to review the boot options available to you. This Install Guide uses, and recommends, the old-school method of BIOS booting and using an MBR. It works. There's nothing wrong with it. If your system disk is 2TB or smaller in size, it won't prevent you from using all of your disk's capacity, either.

But, there are some situations where the old-school method isn't optimal. If you have a system disk >2TB in size, then MBR partitions won't allow you to access all your storage. So that's one reason. Another reason is that there are some so-called "PC" systems out there that don't support BIOS booting anymore, and force you to use UEFI to boot.

Our recommendation is still to go old-school unless you have reason not to. We call this method the BIOS + GRUB (MBR) method. It's the traditional method of setting up a PC-compatible system to boot Linux.

If you need to use UEFI to boot, we are supporting two options. One still uses the BIOS to boot, but with GPT partition tables to support system disks >2.2TB in size. We refer to this method as the BIOS + GRUB (GPT) method.

There is also another method, which avoids using the BIOS for booting at all. Instead, it uses UEFI, with GPT. We call this the UEFI + GRUB (GPT) method.

Partitioning Recommendations

Below are our partitioning recommendations in table form. For MBR-based partitions, use the MBR Block Device and MBR code columns with fdisk. For GPT-based partitions, use the GPT Block Device and GPT Code columns with gdisk:

Partition

Size

MBR Block Device (fdisk)

GPT Block Device (gdisk)

Filesystem

MBR Code

GPT Code

/boot

512 MB

/dev/sda1

/dev/sda1

ext2

83

8300

GRUB boot loader partition

1 MB

not required for MBR

/dev/sda2

For GPT/GUID only, skip for MBR - no filesystem.

N/A

EF02

swap

2x RAM for low-memory systems and production servers; otherwise 2GB.

/dev/sda2

/dev/sda3

swap (default)

82

8200

/ (root)

Rest of the disk, minimum of 10GB. Note: to compile the debian-sources kernel, as described later on this page, requires a minimum of 14GB free space in /tmp; consider a minimum of 20GB in this case.

/dev/sda3

/dev/sda4

XFS recommended, alternatively ext4

83

8300

/home (optional)

User storage and media. Typically most of the disk.

/dev/sda4 (if created)

/dev/sda5 (if created)

XFS recommended, alternatively ext4

83

8300

LVM (optional)

If you want to create an LVM volume.

/dev/sda4 (PV, if created)

/dev/sda5 (PV, if created)

LVM PV

8E

8E00

Partitioning Using fdisk (MBR)

These install instructions assume you are installing Funtoo Linux to an hard disk using Master Boot Record partition tables (MBR). If you are installing Funtoo Linux on a machine where another OS is installed, there is an existing Linux distribution on your system that you want to keep or any other scenario (such as differing swap size requirements), then you will need to adapt these instructions to suit your needs.

fdisk is the tool used to create an MBR partition table. MBR is well-supported on PCs and is recommended if your system disk is 2TB or smaller.

Preparation

First, it's a good idea to make sure that you've found the correct hard disk to partition. Try this command and verify that /dev/sda is the disk that you want to partition:

Creating filesystems

Before your newly-created partitions can be used, the block devices need to be initialized with filesystem metadata. This process is known as creating a filesystem on the block devices. After filesystems are created on the block devices, they can be mounted and used to store files.

You will not create a filesystem on your swap partition, but will initialize it using the mkswap command so that it can be used as disk-based virtual memory. Then we'll run the swapon command to make your newly-initialized swap space active within the live CD environment, in case it is needed during the rest of the install process.

Note that we will not create a filesystem on the GRUB boot loader partition, as GRUB writes binary data directly to that partition when the boot loader is installed, which we'll do later.

You can see the commands you will need to type below. Like the rest of this document, it assumes that you are using a GPT partitioning scheme. If you are using MBR, your root filesystem will likely be created on /dev/sda3 instead and you will need to adjust the target block devices. If you are following our recommendations, then simply do this:

We generally recommend XFS for root filesystems, although ext4 is also a good choice. This tutorial assumes the use of XFS. If you want to use ext4, then be sure that your /etc/fstab file reflects this.

Warning

When deploying an OpenVZ host, please use ext4 exclusively. The Parallels development team tests extensively with ext4, and modern versions of openvz-rhel6-stable are not compatible with XFS, and you may experience kernel bugs.